That night, Mu Tiannan stays in Lin’s guest room. Lin Luoran lives alone in the building in the back yard, which is nowhere near Mu Tiannan, and this comforts her a little bit.
Usually, Lin Luoran cultivates in the mysterious space. Now an outsider is in her house, so she just lays a mat on the floor and tries to return tranquility in the room.
During her trip to Ruili, Lin Luoran had humiliated the arrogant Elly and bought several leftover raw stones for herself. What’s more important is that she has managed to absorb all the Reiki from the raw stones from the auction, which is more than she can absorb in a month while working as a salesgirl!
Lin Luoran can feel the flowing Reiki when only her spirit goes into the bead. In the medicine field, Reiki from various plants intermingle, which makes her want to transport into the space immediately. However, thinking about Mu Tiannan who is sleeping in her front yard, Lin Luoran somehow feels risky to do so.
She draws her spirit back and holds her thirst of going into the space. Lin Luoran decides to sit in meditation.
Keeping the breathing methods that she learns from Master Jia in mind, Lin Luoran goes into the state of inward vision again. The Reiki she absorbs from the bead not only fills her meridians, but also nourishes her bones and muscles.
Lin Luoran fixes her concentration on pushing Reiki which starts to flow along her meridians. With this huge success, Lin Luoran “looks at” the Reiki inside of her and hopes to push herself tonight into breaking through the bottleneck.
For Lin Luoran, the insufficiency of Reiki is no longer a problem because the bead can continuously export Reiki to her body. Her current problem is that she can’t direct Reiki with ease and she can only stare at the plenty of Reiki inside of her and do nothing.
Lin Luoran focus on herself. Reiki is flowing around in her meridians and tangling with each other like thread ends. When she forces to direct them, they will tangle even much.
Well? What if she disentangles them?
Lin Luoran suddenly understands. She has a hunch that she has found the right way this time and starts to tease out the Reiki. She picks two thin thread ends and combines them. The third end, the fourth end… In this way, Lin Luoran manages to combine all the threads of Reiki into one!
Lin Luoran nearly burst out laughing, looking at the struggling Reiki.
Despite the resistance of Reiki, Lin Luoran keeps mixing them in the way Luodong makes clay dolls. Gradually, she closes the interval between and merges them into one.
Lin Luoran makes lots of efforts to gain absolute command on Reiki. She doesn’t have time to feel glad and carefully guide Reiki to flow along her meridians— Her bones marrow is cleansed and her meridians are cleared because of the flame fruit, so she can easily handle the blocks in her meridians. The hardship in her cultivation is that she doesn’t have a teacher, a textbook or a companion. She has to explore everything by herself and she has no idea about what is right.
Cultivation is difficult, but Lin Luoran is willing to spend time on trying. She never wants to go back to her ordinary self again.
She will go further down this road and have a wider world, right?
“Boom…” Like fireworks exploding, Reiki finally finishes a whole flow under Lin Luoran’s command! It’s exactly the same as the last time when she suddenly gets the inward vision!
Lin Luoran breathes out the turbid air and feels relaxed. Every pore of her is stretched, absorbing Reiki from the bead greedily.
Lin Luoran calms herself down. She goes on merging Reiki and guides them to flow.
The weather of winter is cold and dry. But Lin Luoran’s room is humid because of her cultivation.
In such a quiet night, everybody except Lin Luoran has fallen asleep. Suddenly, the bell hanging on the eave rings when there is no wind.
It is only a little noise but Lin Luoran notices it and opens her eyes.
……
A man in black jumps off the window of the second floor and land on the muddy ground in the back yard. He doesn’t make any noise.
He is light-footed like a cat. With several jumps, he reaches the building where Lin Luoran is in.
Looking at the exquisite building, the man in black smiles frivolously. Does the woman really consider herself as a princess by living in such a building? He ridicules. He doesn’t want to admit that the peasants’ daughter who lives in the building surpasses all the other noble ladies he has ever met.
The man checks on the building. The delicate carved banisters can help him go up. He uses his inner force and taps the ground. The man climbs on the banisters with a high leap.
He doesn’t rush to go inside and just looks through the half-closed window. With bright moon hanging in the sky, he assumes that he can see an asleep beauty on the bed. Who knows that on the bed, there is nothing but the fluttering veil!
At the moment, Lin Luoran is actually in the room and in the state of tranquility. The reason why the man in black can’t see her meditating just then is that she is completely relaxed and integrated with the environment.
The man in black is bold. Seeing that no one is inside, he decides to go in to explore so he crosses over the banisters.
This is an old building. The wood floor is loose. The man’s jump makes the bell on the eave ring.
The man knows that something is wrong. He lurks under the window for a while and nothing odd happens. Thus, he is about to go in. He doesn’t know that Lin Luoran who is in tranquility opens her eyes the moment the bell rings. Her eyes are shining like stars under the bright moon!
After Lin Luoran is no longer in tranquility, the man in black immediately senses the atmosphere of a cultivator inside of the room because Lin Luoran doesn’t deliberately hide herself. The man is surprised and strikes out an attack.
Lin Luoran’s first response is to dodge the attack. It will be easy since she is swift now. However, she is somehow irritated—She has been cultivating herself and she shall not back off every time when there is danger. Besides, the man is too bold to climb inside of her room. If she is an ordinary girl and he is an orchid thief, will there be any chance for her to save herself?
Thinking about the Reiki inside of her, Lin Luoran musters up her courage to attack back—The Tai Chi she learns from Master Jia is quite useful after several practice!
This is a cultivator! Looking at the hand coming to him, the man in black is alerted. However, he can’t dodge it although it seems to be slow—
“Bang!”
Their hands bump against each other. The man tumbles back with a muggy hum.
“It’s you!” Lin Luoran recognizes this man from his voice and frowns.
